Where ever I am not is the place where I am myself.

The dandy should aspire to be uninterruptedly sublime. He should live and sleep in front of a mirror.

There are but three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the warrior and the poet. To know, to kill and to create. The rest of mankind may be taxed and drudged, they are born for the stable, that is to say, to practise what they call professions.

I have cultivated my hysteria with pleasure and terror.

The taste for pleasure attaches us to the present. The concern with our salvation leaves us hanging on the future.

Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.

In literature as in ethics, there is danger, as well as glory, in being subtle. Aristocracy isolates us.